■Cns 



MR EVERETT'S ORATION, 



BtUiievelr «t €»mi>viVatf 



4 JULY, 1826. 




Class EihSA^ 

Book . i ? ^ 



AN 



^flil»firf¥ M SutwlrlWif 



FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



OF Tii:p 



DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE 



THE TTNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BY EDWARD EVERETT, (]^Y-'^^ 



BOSTON : 
CUMMINGS, HILLIARD, AND COMPANY. 

1826. 



T- 

r 






DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT : 

District Clerk's Offict. 

Be it Temembered, that on the eighteenth day of July, A. D. 1826, and in the 
fifty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America, Cunimings, 
Hilliard, 4^ Co. of tlie said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, / 
the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit: — 

" An Oration delivered at Cambridge on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declara- 
tion of the Independence of the United States of America. By Edward Everett " 

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, " An Act 
for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, andiooks 
to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned," 
and also to an Act, entitled, " An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, ' An Act for 
the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, 
to the authors and proprietors oi' such copies during the times therein mentioned f 
and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching 
historical and other prints." 

.TNO. W. DAVIS, 
Clerk of the District of Massachusetts, 



CAMBRIDGE. 

From the University Press— By Hilliard & Metcalf. 






Cambridge, July 6, 1826. 
Sir, 

At a meeting of citizens of Cambridge and the vicinity on 
the 4th of July, the following vote was passed, which, by direction of 
the Committee thereby appointed, I beg leave to communicate to you. 

I have the honor to be, &.c. 

S. P. P. FAY. 
The Hon. Edward Everett. 



VoTED^ That the 

Hon. Mr Fay, 
" Mr Fuller, 
^ " Mr Stearns, 

Dr Hedge, 
Mr Whipple, 
be a Committee to present to the Hon. Edward EvEREtT the thanks 
of this meeting for the Oration this day delivered by him, and 
respectfully to request that he will permit the same to be published. 



t 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens, 

It belongs to us with strong propriety, to 
celebrate this day. The town of Cambridge, and 
the county of Middlesex, are filled with the vestiges 
of the Revolution ; whithersoever we turn our eyes, 
we behold some memento of its glorious scenes. 
Within the walls, in which we are now assembled, 
was convened the first provincial Congress, after its 
adjournment at Concord. The rural magazine at 
Medford reminds us of one of the earliest acts of 
British aggression. The march of both divisions of 
the Royal army, on the memorable nineteenth of 
April, was through the limits of Cambridge ; in the 
neighbouring towns of Lexington and Concord, the 
first blood of the Revolution was shed ; in West 
Cambridge, the royal convoy of provisions was, the 
same day, gallantly surprised by the aged citizens, 
who staid to protect their homes, while their sons 
pursued the foe. Here the first American army was 
formed ; from this place, on the seventeenth of June, 



.1 



2 

Was detached the Spartan band, that immortalized the 
heights of Charlestown, and consecrated that day^. 
with blood and fire, to the cause of American Liberty. 
Beneath the venerable ehn, which still shades the 
southwestern corner of the common, General Wash- 
ington first unsheathed his sword at the head of an 
American army, and to that seat* was wont every 
Sunday to repair, to join in the supplications which 
were made for the welfare of his country. 

How changed is now the scene ! The foe is 
gone ! The din and the desolation of war are 
passed ; Science has long resumed her station in 
the shades of our venerable University, no longer 
glittering with arms ; the anxious war-council is no 
longer in session, to offer a reward for the discovery 
of the best mode of making salt-petre^ — an unpromis- 
ing stage of hostilities, when an army of twenty thou- 
sand men is in the field in front of the foe ; the tall 
grass now waves in the trampled sally-port of some 
of the rural redoubts, that form a part of the simple 
lines of circumvallation, within which a half-armed 
American militia held the flower of the British army 
blockaded ; the plough has done, what the English 
batteries could not do, — has levelled others of them 
with the earth ; and the Men, the great and good 
men, their warfare is over, and they have gone quietly 
down to the dust they redeemed from oppression. 

* The first wall pew, on the right liand of the pulpit. 



At the close of a half century, since the declara- 
tion of our Independence, we are assembled to 
commemorate that great and happy event. We 
come together, not because it needs, but because it 
deserves these acts of celebration. We do not meet 
each other, and exchange our felicitations, because 
we should otherwise fall into forgetfulness of this 
auspicious era ; but because we owe it to our fathers 
and to our children, to mark its return with grateful 
festivities. The major part of this assembly is 
composed of those, who had not yet engaged in the 
active scenes of life, when the Revolution com- 
menced. We come not to applaud our own work, 
but to pay a filial tribute to the deeds of our fathers. 
It was for their children, that the heroes and sages 
of the Revolution labored and bled. They were 
too wise not to know, that it was not personally 
their own cause, in which they were embarked ; 
they felt that they were engaging in an enterprise, 
which an entire generation must be too short to 
bring to its mature and perfect issue. The most 
they could promise themselves was, that, having cast 
forth the seed of liberty ; having shielded its tender 
germ from the stern blasts that beat upon it ; having 
watered it with the tears of waiting eyes, and the 
blood of brave hearts ; their children might gather 
the fruit of its branches, while those who planted it 
should moulder in peace beneath its shade. 



Nor was it only in this, tliai we discern tiieii 
disinterestedness, their heroic forgetfuhiess of self. 
Not only was the independence, for which they 
struggled, a great and arduous adventure, of which 
they were to encounter the risk, and others to enjoy 
the benefits ; but the oppressions, which roused 
them, had assumed, in their day, no worse form 
than that of a pernicious principle. No intolerable 
acts of oppression had ground them to the dust. 
They were not slaves, rising in desperation from 
beneath the agonies of the lash ; but free men, 
snuffing from afar " the tainted gale of tyranny." 
The worst encroachments, on which the British 
ministry had ventured, might have been borne, con- 
sistently with the practical enjoyment of many of 
the advantages resulting from good government. 
On the score of calculation alone, that generation 
had much better have paid the duties on glass, 
painters' colors, stamped paper, and tea, than have 
plunged into the expenses of the Revolutionary war. 
But they thought not of shuffling off upon posterity 
the burden of resistance. They well understood the 
part, w^hich Providence had assigned to them. They 
perceived that they were called to discharge a high 
and perilous office to the cause of Freedom ; that 
their hands were elected to strike the blow, for 
which near two centuries of preparation — never re- 
mitted, though often unconscious — had been making, 



on one side or the other, of the Atlantic. They 
felt that the colonies had now reached that stage in 
their growth, when the difficult problem of colonial 
government must be solved ; difficult, I call it, for 
such it is, to the statesman, whose mind is not suffi- 
ciently enlarged for the idea, that a wise colonial 
government must naturally and rightfully end in in- 
dependence ; that even a mild and prudent sway, on 
the part of the mother country, furnishes no reason 
for not severing the bands of the colonial subjection ; 
and that when the rising state has passed the period 
of adolescence, the only alternative which remains, 
is that of a peaceable separation, or a convulsive 

rupture. 

The British ministry, at that tinte weaker than it 

had ever been since the infatuated reign of James II, 

had no knowledge of political science, but that 

which they derived from the text of official records. 

They drew their maxims, as it was happily said of 

one of them, that he did his measures, from the file. 

They heard that a distant province had resisted the 

execution of an act of parliament. Indeed, and 

what is the specific, in cases of resistance ? — a 

military force ; — and two more regiments are ordered 

to Boston. Again they hear, that the General 

Court of Massachusetts Bay has taken counsels 

subversive of the allegiance due to the crown. A case 

of a refractory corporation : — what is to be done r 



6 

First try a mandamus ; and if that fails, seize the 
franchises into his Majesty's hands. They never 
asked the great questions, whether nations, like 
man, have not their principles of growth ; whether 
Providence has assigned no laws to regulate the 
changes in the condition of that most astonishing of 
human things, a nation of kindred men. They did 
not inquire^ I will not say whether it were rightful 
and expedient, but whether it were practicable, to 
give law across the Atlantic, to a people who pos- 
sessed within themselves every imaginable element 
of self-government ; — a people rocked in the cradle 
of liberty, brought up to hardship, inheriting nothing 
but their rights on earth, and their hopes in heaven. 
But though the rulers of Britain appear not to 
have caught a glimpse of the great principles in- 
volved in these questions, our fathers had asked and 
answered them. They perceived, with the rapidity 
of intuition, that the hour of separation had come ; 
because a principle was assumed by the British 
government, which put an instantaneous check to 
the further growth of liberty. Either the race of 
civilized man happily planted on our shores, at first 
slowly and painfully reared, but at length auspi- 
ciously multiplying in America, is destined never to 
constitute a free and independent state ; or these 
measures must be resisted, which go to bind it, in a 
mild but abject colonial vassalage. Either the hope 



must be forever abandoned, the hope that had been 
brightening and kindling toward assurance, like the 
glowing skies of the morning, — the hope that a new 
centre of civilization was to be planted on the new 
continent, at which the social and political institu- 
tions of the world may be brought to the stand- 
ard of reason and truth, after thousands of years of 
degeneracy, — either this hope must be abandoned, 
and forever, or the battle was now to be fought, 
first in the political assemblies, and then, if need be, 
in the field. 

In the halls of legislation, scarcely can it be 
said that the battle was fought. A spectacle in- 
deed seemed to be promised to the civilized world, 
of breathless interest and uncalculated consequence. 
" You are placed," said the provincial Congress 
of Massachusetts, in their address to the inhabitants 
of December 4th 1774, an address promulgated at 
the close of a session held in this very house, where 
we are now convened, " You are placed by Provi- 
dence in a post of honor, because it is a post of 
danger ; and while struggling for the noblest objects, 
the liberties of our country, the happiness of pos- 
terity, and the rights of human nature, the eyes, not 
only of North America and the whole British em- 
pire, but of all Europe, are upon you." * A mighty 
question of political right was at issue, between the 
two hemispheres. Europe and America, in the face 

* Massachusetts State Papers, p. 4 in. 



of iiitiiikinci, are going to plead the great cause, on 
which the fate of popular government forever is 
suspended. One circumstance, and one alone exists, 
to diminish the interest of the contention — the per- 
ilous inequality of the parties — an inequality far ex- 
ceeding that, which gives animation to a contest ; 
and so great as to destroy the hope of an ably waged 
encounter. On the one side, were arrayed the two 
houses of the British parliament, the modern school 
of political eloquence, the arena where great minds 
had for a century and a half strenuously wrestled 
themselves into strength and power, and in better 
days the common and upright chancery of an em- 
pire, on which the sun never set. Upon the other 
side, rose up the colonial assemblies of Massachu- 
setts and Virginia, and the continental congress of 
Philadelphia, composed of men whose training had 
been within a small provincial circuit ; w ho had 
never before felt the inspiration, which the con- 
sciousness of a station before the world imparts ; 
who brought no power into the contest but that 
which they drew from their cause and their bosoms. 
It is by champions like these, that the great princi- 
ples of representative government, of chartered 
rights, and constitutional liberty, are to be discuss- 
ed ; and surely never, in the annals of national con- 
troversy, was exhibited a triumph so complete of 
the seemingly weaker party, a rout so disastrous of 



the stronger. Often as it has been repeated, it A^nll 
bear another repetition ; it never ought to be omitted 
in the history of constitutional liberty ; it ought es- 
pecially to be repeated this day ; — the various ad- 
dresses, petitions, and appeals, the correspondence, 
the resolutions, the legislative and popular debates, 
from 1 764, to the declaration of independence, pre- 
sent a maturity of political wisdom, a strength of ar- 
gument, a gravity of style, a manly eloquence, and a 
moral courage, of w hich unquestionably the modern 
world affords no other example. This meed of 
praise, substantially accorded at the time by Chat- 
ham, in the British parliament, may well be repeat- 
ed by us. For most of the venerated men to whom 
it is paid, it is but a pious tribute to departed worth. 
The Lees and the Henrys, Otis, Quincy, Warren, 
and Samuel Adams, the men who s}ioke those 
words of thrilling power, which raised and ruled the 
storm of resistance, and rang like the voice of fate 
across the Atlantic, are beyond the reach of our 
praise. To most of them it was granted to witness 
some of the fruits of their labors ; such fruit as 
revolutions do not often bear. Others departed at 
an untimely hour, or nobly fell in the onset ; too 
soon for their country, too soon for liberty, too soon 
for every thing but their own undying fame. But 
all are not gone ; some still survive among us ; the 
favored, enviable men, to hail the jubilee of the in- 
2 



10 

dependence they declared. Go back, fellow citi- 
zens, to that day, when Jefferson and Adams 
composed the sub-committee, who reported the 
Declaration of Independence. Think ol" the mingled 
sensations of that proud but anxious day, compared 
to the joy of this. What honor, w hat crown, what 
treasure, could the world and all its kingdoms af- 
ford, compared with the honor and happiness of 
having been united in that commission, and living 
to see its most wavering hopes turned into glorious 
reality. Venerable men ! you have outlived the 
dark days, wdiich followed your more than heroic 
deed ; you have outlived your own strenuous con- 
tention, who should stand first among the people, 
whose liberty you vindicated. You have lived to 
bear to each other the respect, which the nation 
bears to you both ; and each has been so happy as 
to exchange the honorable name of the leader of a 
party, for that more honorable one, the Father of 
his Country. While this our tribute of respect, on 
the jubilee of our independence, is paid to the grey 
hairs of the venerable survivor in our neighbourhood ; 
let it not less heartily be sped to him, whose hand 
traced the lines of that sacred charter, which, to the 
end of time, has made this day illustrious. And is 
an empty profession of respect all that we ow^e to 
the man, who can show the original draught of the 
Declaration of the Independence of the United States 



11 

of America, in his own handwriting ? Ought not a 
title-deed like this to become the acquisition of the 
nation ? Ought it not to be laid up in the archives of 
the people ? Ought not the price, at which it is 
bought, to be tiie ease and comfort of the old age of 
him who drew it ? Ought not he, who at the age of 
thirty declared the independence of his country, at 
the age of eighty, to be secured by his country in 
the enjoyment of his own ?* 

Nor let us forget, on the return of this eventful 
day, the men, who, when the conflict of counsel 
was over, stood forward in that of arms. Yet let 
me not by faintly endeavouring to sketch, do deep 
injustice to the story of their exploits. The efforts 
of a life would scarce suffice to paint out this pic- 
ture, in all its astonishing incidents, in all its min- 
gled colors of sublimity and woe, of agony and tri- 
umph. But the age of commemoration is at hand. 
The voice of our fathers' blood begins to cry to us, 
from beneath the soil which it moistened. Time 
is bringing forward, in their proper relief, the men 
and the deeds of that high-souled day. The gene- 
ration of contemporary worthies is gone ; the crowd 
of the unsignalized great and good disappears ; 
and the leaders in war as well as council, are seen, 
in Fancy's eye, to take their stations on the mount 
of Remembrance. They come from the embattled 
cliffs of Abraham ; they start from the heaving sods 

* See Note at the end. 



12 

of Bunker's Hill ; they gather from the blazing lines 
of Saratoga and Yorktown, from the blood-dyed 
waters of the Brandywine, from the dreary snows 
of Valley Forge, and all the hard fought fields of 
the war. With all their wounds and all their hon- 
ors, they rise and plead with us, for their brethren 
who survive ; and bid us, if indeed we cherish the 
memory of those, who bled in our cause, to show 
our gratitude, not by sounding words, but by stretch- 
ing out the strong arm of the country's prosperity, 
to help the veteran survivors gently down to their 
graves. 

But it is time to turn from sentiments, on which 
it is unavailing to dwell. The fiftieth return of 
this all-important day, appears to enjoin on us to 
reassert the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Have we met, fellow citizens, to com- 
memorate merely the successful termination of a 
war ? Certainly not; the war of 1756 was, in its 
duration, nearly equal, and signalized in America 
by the most brilliant achievements of the provincial 
arms. But no one would attempt to prevent that 
war, with all its glorious incidents, from gradually 
sinking into the shadows, which time throws back 
on the deeds of men. Do we celebrate the anni- 
versary of our independence, merely because a vast 
region was severed from an European empire, and 
established a government for itself? Scarcely even 



13 

this ; the acquisition of Louisiana, a region larger 
than the old United States, — the almost instanta- 
neous conversion of a vast Spanish colonial waste, 
into free and prosperous members of our republican 
federation, — the whole effected by a single happy 
exercise of the treaty-making power, — this is an 
event, in nature not wholly unlike, in importance 
not infinitely beneath the separation of the colonies 
from England, regarded merely as a historical trans- 
action. But no one thinks of commemorating with 
festivals the anniversary of this cession ; perhaps 
not ten who hear me recollect the date of the treaty 
by which it was effected ; although it is unquestion- 
ably the most important occurrence in our history, 
since the declaration of independence, and will ren- 
der the administration of Mr Jefferson memorable, 
as long as our republic shall endure. 

But it is not merely nor chiefly the military success 
nor the political event, which we commemorate on 
these patriotic anniversaries. It is to mistake the 
principle of our celebration to speak of its object, 
either as a trite theme, or as one among other im- 
portant and astonishing incidents, of the same kind, 
in the world. The declaration of the independence 
of the United States of America, considered, on 
the one hand, as the consummation of a long train 
of measures and counsels — preparatory, even though 
unconsciously, of this event, — and on the other hand, 



14 

as the foundation of tlie systems of government, 
which have happily been established in our beloved 
country, deserves commemoration, as the most im- 
portant event, humanly speaking, in the history of 
the world ; as forming the era, from which the 
establishment of government on a rightful foundation 
is destined universally to date. Looking upon the 
declaration of independence as the one prominent 
event, which is to represent the American system 
(and history will so look upon it), I deem it right in 
itself and seasonable this day to assert, that, while 
all other political revolutions, reforms, and improve- 
ments have been in various ways of the nature of 
palliatives and alleviations of systems essentially and 
irremediably vicious, this alone is the great discove- 
ry, in political science ; the Newtonian theory of 
government, toward which the minds of all honest 
and sagacious statesmen in other times had strained, 
but without success ; the practical fulfilment of all 
the theories of political perfection, which had amused 
the speculations and eluded the grasp of every for- 
mer period and people. And although assuredly 
this festive hour affords but little scope for dry dis- 
quisition, and shall not be engrossed by me with 
abstract speculation, yet I shall not think 1 wan- 
der from the duties of the day, in dwelling briefly 
on the chain of ideas, by which we reach this great 
conclusion. 



15 

The political organization of a people is of all 
matters of temporal concernment the most import- 
ant. Drawn together into that great assemblage, 
which we call a nation, by the social principle, 
some mode of organization must exist among men ; 
and on that organization depends more directly, 
more collectively, more permanently, than on any 
thing else, the condition of the individual members 
that make up the community. On the political or- 
ganization, in which a people shall for generations 
have been reared, it mainly depends, whether we 
shall behold in one of the brethren of the human 
family the New Hollander, making a nauseous meal 
from the worms which he extracts from a piece of 
rotten wood ; * or the African cutting out the under 
jaw of his captive to be strung on a wire, as a tro- 
phy of victory, while the mangled wretch is left to 
bleed to death, on the field of battle ; f or whether 
we shall behold him social, civilized, christian ; 
scarcely faded from that perfect image, in which at 
the divine purpose, " Let us make man," 

" in beauty clad, 

With health in every vein, 

And reason throned upon his brow, 

Stepped forth immortal man." 

I am certainly aware that between the individuals 
that compose a nation, and the nation as an organ- 
ized body, there are action and reaction ; — that if 

* Malthus's Essay on Population, vol, i. p. 33. Amer. ed. 
t Edwards's History of the West Indies, vol. ii. p. 68. 3d ed. 



16 

political institutions affect the individual, individuals 
are sometimes gifted with power, and seize on op- 
portunities, most essentially to modify institutions; — 
nor am I at all disposed to agitate the scholastic 
question, which was first, in the order of nature or 
time, men forming governments or e;overnments de- 
termining the condition of men. But having long 
acted and reacted upon each other, it needs no ar- 
gument to prove, that political institutions get to be 
infinitely the most important agent in fixing the 
condition of individuals, and even in determining in 
what manner and to what extent individual capacity 
shall be exerted and individual character formed. 
While other causes do unquestionably operate, — 
some of them, such as national descent, physical 
race, climate, and geographical position, very power- 
fully ; yet of none of them is the effect constant, 
uniform, and prompt ;~while I believe it is impossible 
to point out an important change in the political or- 
ganization of a people, a change by which it has 
been rendered more or less favorable to liberty, 
without discovering a correspondent effect on their 
prosperity. 

Such is the infinite importance to the nations of 
men of the political organization which prevails 
among them. The most momentous practical ques- 
tion therefore of course is, in what way a people 
shall determine the political organization under 



17 

which it Mall live ; or in still broader terms, what is a 
right foundation of government. Till the establish- 
ment of the American constitutions, this question had 
received but one answer in the world ; I mean but 
one, which obtained for any length of time and 
among any numerous people ; and that answer was, 
force. The right of the strongest was the only foot- 
ing on which the governments of the ancient and 
modern nations were in fact placed ; and the only 
effort of the theorists was, to disguise the simple 
and somewhat startling doctrine of the right of the 
strongest, by various mystical or popular fictions, 
which in no degree altered its real nature. Of 
these the only two worthy to detain us, on the pre- 
sent occasion, are those of the two great English 
political parties, the whigs and the tories, as they 
are called, by names not unlike, in dignity and sig- 
nificance, to the doctrines which are designated by 
them. The tories taught that the only foundation 
of government was " divine right ; " and this is the 
same notion, which is still inculcated on the conti- 
nent of Europe ; though the delicate ears of the age 
are flattered by the somewhat milder term, legiti- 
macy. The whigs maintained, that the foundation 
of government was an " original contract ; " but of 
this contract the existing organization was the re- 
cord and the evidence ; and the obligation was 
perpetually binding. It may deserve the passing 
3 



18 

remark, therefore, that in reality the doctrine of the 
whigs in England is a little less liberal than that of 
the tories. To say that the will of God is the war- 
rant, by which the king and his hereditary counsel- 
lors govern the land, is, to be sure, in a practical 
sense, what the illustrious sage of the revolution, 
surviving in our neighbourhood, dared as early as 
1765, to pronounce it, " dark ribaldry." But in a 
merely speculative sense it may, without offence, be 
said, that government, like every thing else, subsists 
by the Divine will ; and in this acceptation, there is 
a certain elevation and unction in the sentiment. 
But to say that the form of government is matter of 
original compact with the people ; that my ances- 
tors, ages ago, agreed that they and their posterity, 
to the end of time, should give up to a certain line 
of princes the rule of the state ; that no right re- 
mains of revising this compact ; that nothing but 
extreme necessity, a necessity which it is treason- 
able even to attempt to define beforehand, justifies a 
departure from this compact, in which no provision 
is made that the will of the majority should be done, 
but the contrary ; — a doctrine like this, as it seems 
to me, while it is in substance as servile as the other, 
has the disadvantage of affecting a liberality not 
borne out by the truth. 

And now, fellow citizens, I think I speak the words 
of truth and soberness, without color or exaggcra- 



19 

tion, when I say, that before the establishment of 
our American constitutions, this tory doctrine of the 
divine right was the most common, and this whig 
doctrine of the original contract was professedly 
the most liberal doctrine, ever maintained by any 
political party in any powerful state. I do not mean 
that in some of the little Grecian republics, during 
their short-lived noon of liberty and glory, nothing 
better was practised ; nor that, in other times and 
places, speculative politicians had not in their closets 
dreamed of a better foundation of government. But 
I do mean, that, whereas the whigs in England are 
the party of politicians who have enjoyed, by gen- 
eral consent, the credit of inculcating a more liberal 
system, this precious notion of the compact is the 
extent to which their liberality went. 

It is plain, whichever of these solemn phrases — 
"divine right" or " original compact " — we may pre- 
fer to use, that the right of the strongest lies at the 
foundation of both, in the same way and to the 
same degree. The doctrine of the divine right gives 
to the ruler authority to sustain himself against the 
people, not merely because resistance is unlawful, 
but because it is sacrilegious. The doctrine of the 
compact denounces every attempted change in the 
person of the prince as a breach of faith, and as 
such also not only treasonable but immoral. When 
a conflict ensues, force alone, of course, decides 



20 

which party shall prevail ; and when force has so 
decided, all the sanctions of the divine will and of 
the social compact revive in favor of the successful 
party. Even the statute legislation of England, 
although somewhat coy of unveiling the chaste mys- 
teries of the common law, allows the successful 
usurper to claim the allegiance of the subject, in as 
full a manner as it could be done by a lawful sove- 
reign. 

Nothing is wanting to fill up this sketch of other 
governments, but to consider what is the form in 
which force is exercised to sustain them ; and this 
is that of a standing army ; — at this moment, the 
chief support of every government on earth, except 
our own. As popular violence, — the unrestrained 
and irresistible force of the mass of men, long op- 
pressed and late awakened, and bursting in its 
wrath all barriers of law and humanity, — is un- 
happily the usual instrument by which the intol- 
erable abuses of a corrupt government are remov- 
ed ; so the same blind force of the same fearful mul- 
titude, designedly kept in ignorance both of their 
duty and their privileges as citizens, employed in a 
form somewhat different indeed, but far more dread- 
ful, that of a mercenary standing army, is the instru- 
ment by which corrupt governments are sustained. 
The deplorable scenes Avhich marked the earlier 
stages of the French revolution have called the 



21 

attention of this age to the fearful effects of popular 
violence ; and the minds of men have recoiled at 
the dismay w^hich leads the van, and the desola- 
tion which marks the progress of an infuriated mob. 
But the power of the mob is transient ; the rising 
sun most commonly scatters its mistrustful ranks ; 
the difficulty of subsistence drives its members asun- 
der ; and it is only while it exists in mass, that it 
is terrible. But there is a form, in which the mob 
is indeed portentous ; when to all its native terrors 
it adds the force of a frightful permanence ; when, 
by a regular organization, its strength is so curiously 
divided, and by a strict discipline its parts are so 
easily combined, that each and every portion of it 
carries in its presence the strength and terror of the 
whole ; and when, instead of that want of concert 
vi^hich renders the common mob incapable of ardu- 
ous enterprises, it is despotically swayed by a sin- 
gle master mind, and may be moved in array across 
the globe. 

I remember to have seen the two kinds of mob 
brought into direct collision. I was present at the 
second great meeting of the populace of London in 
1819, in the midst of a crowd of I know not how 
many thousands, but assuredly a vast multitude, 
which was gathered together in Smithfield market. 
The universal distress, as you recollect, was ex- 
treme ; it was a short time after the scenes at Man 



22 

Chester, at which men's mmds were ulcerated ; — 
deaths by starvation were said not to be rare ; — ruin 
by the stagnation of business was general ; — and 
some were already brooding over the dark project of 
assassinating the ministers, which was not long after 
matured by Thistlewood and his associates ; some 
of whom, on the day to which I allude, harangued 
this excited, desperate, starving assemblage. When 
I considered the state of feeling prevailing in the 
multitude around me — when I looked in their low- 
ering faces — heard their deep indignant exclama- 
tions — reflected on the physical force concentrated, 
probably that of thirty or forty thousand able-bodi- 
ed men ; and added to all this, that they were assem- 
bled to exercise an undoubted privilege of British 
citizens ; I did suppose that any small number of 
troops, who should attempt to interrupt them, would 
be immolated on the spot. While I was musing on 
these things, and turning in my mind the com- 
monplaces on the terrors of a mob, a trumpet w as 
heard to sound — an uncertain, but a harsh and clam- 
orous blast. I looked that the surrounding stalls 
should have furnished the unarmed multitude at 
least with that weapon, w ith which Virginius sacri- 
ficed his daughter to the liberty of Rome ; I looked 
that the flying pavement should begin to darken the 
air. Another blast is heard — a cry of " The horse- 
guards!" ran through the assembled thousands ; the 



23 

orators on the platform were struck mute ; and 
the whole of that mighty host of starving, desperate 
men incontinently took to their heels ; in which, I 
must confess — feeling no vocation, in that cause to 
be faithful found, among the faithless — I did myself 
join them. We had run through the Old Bailey 
and reached Ludgate hill, before we found out, that 
we had been put to flight by a single mischievous 
tool of power, who had come triumphing down the 
opposite street on horseback, blowmg a stage-coach- 
man's horn. 

We have heard of those midnight scenes of deso- 
lation, when the populace of some overgrown capi- 
tal, exhausted by the extremity of political oppression, 
or famishing at the gates of luxurious palaces, or 
kindled by some transport of fanatical zeal, rushes 
out to find the victims of its fury ; the lurid glare 
of torches, casting their gleams on faces dark with 
rage ; the ominous din of the alarm bell, striking 
with affright, on the broken visions of the sleepers ; 
the horrid yells, the thrilling screams, the multi- 
tudinous roar of the living storm, as it sweeps on- 
ward to its objects ; — but oh, the disciplined, the 
paid, the honored mob ; not moving in rags and 
starvation to some act of blood or plunder ; but 
marching, in all the pomp and circumstance of war, 
to lay waste a feebler state ; or cantoned at home 
among an overawed and broken-spirited people ! I 



24 

have read of granaries plundered, of castles sack- 
ed, and their inmates cruelly murdered, by the 
ruthless hands of the mob. I have read of friendly 
states ravaged, governments overturned, tyrannies 
founded and upheld, proscriptions executed, fruit- 
ful regions turned into trampled deserts, the tide of 
civilization thrown back, and a line of generations 
cursed, by a well organized system of military 
force. 

Such was the foundation in theory and in prac- 
tice of all the governments, which can be considered 
as having had a permanent existence in the world, 
before the Revolution in this country. There are 
certainly shades of diiference between the oriental 
despotisms, ancient and modern — the military em- 
pire of Rome — the feudal sovereignties of the mid- 
dle ages — and the legitimate monarchies of the 
present day. Some were and are more, and some 
less, susceptible of melioration in practice ; and of 
all of them it might perhaps be said — being all in 
essence bad, 

" That, which is best administered, is best." 

In no one of these governments, nor in any gov- 
ernment, was the truth admitted, that the only just 
foundation of all government is the will of the peo- 
ple. If it ever occurred to the practical or theoreti- 
cal politician, that such an idea deserved examina- 
tion, the e\[)eriment was thought to have been made 



25 

in the republics of Greece, and to have failed, as 
fail it certainly did, from the physical impossibility 
of conducting the business of the state by the actual 
intervention of every citizen. Such a plan of gov- 
ernment must of course fail, if for no other reason, 
at least for this, that it would prevent the citizen 
from pursuing his own business, which it is the ob- 
ject of all government to enable him to do. It was 
considered then as settled, that the citizens, each 
and all, could not be the government ; some one or 
more must discharge its duties for them. Who 
shall do this ; — how shall they be designated ? 

The first king was a fortunate soldier, and the first 
nobleman was one of his generals ; and government 
has passed by descent to their posterity, with no 
other interruption, than has taken place, when some 
new soldier of fortune has broken in upon this line 
of succession, in favor of himself and of his generals. 
The people have passed for nothing in the plan ; 
and whenever it has occurred to a busy genius to 
put the question. By what right government is thus 
exercised and transmitted ? the common answer has 
been. By Divine right ; while, in times of rare illu- 
mination, men have been consoled with the assur- 
ance, that such was the original contract. 

But a brighter day and a better dispensation were 
m reserve. The founders of the feudal system, 
barbarous, arbitrary, and despotic as they were, and 
4 



26 

profoundly ignorant of political science, were ani- 
mated themselves with a spirit of personal liberty ; 
out of which, after ages of conflict, grew up a spe- 
cies of popular representation. In the eye of the 
feudal system, the king was the first baron, and 
standing within his own sphere, each other baron 
was as good as the first. From this important rela- 
tion, in which the feudal lords of England claimed 
to stand to their prince, arose the practice of their 
being consulted by him, in great and difficult con- 
junctures of affairs ; and hence the co-operation of 
a grand council (subsequently convened in two 
houses under the name of parliament) in making 
the laws and administering the government. The 
formation of this body has proved a great step in 
the progress of popular rights ; its influence has been 
decisive in breaking the charm of absolute monar- 
chy, and giving to a body partially eligible by the 
people a share in the government. It has also ope- 
rated most auspiciously on liberty, by exhibiting to 
the world, on the theatre of a conspicuous nation, a 
living example, that in proportion as the rights and 
interests of a people are represented in a govern- 
ment, in that degree the state becomes strong and 
prosperous. Thus far the science and the practice 
of government had gone in England, and here it 
had come to a stand. An equal representation, even 
in the House of Commons, was unthought of ; or 



27 

thought of only as one of the exploded abominations 
of Cromwell. It is asserted by Mr Hume, writing 
about the middle of the last century, and weighing 
this subject with equal moderation and sagacity, 
that " the tide has run long and with some rapidity 
to the side of popular government, and is just be- 
ginning to turn toward monarchy." And he main- 
tains that the British constitution is, though slowly, 
yet gradually verging toward an absolute govern- 
ment.* 

Such was the state of political science, when the 
independence of our country was declared, and its 
constitutions organized on the basis of that declara- 
tion. The precedents in favor of a popular system 
were substantially these, the short-lived prosperity 
of the republics of Greece, where each citizen took 
part in the conduct of affairs ; and the admission 
into the British government, of one branch of the 
legislature nominally elective, and operating, rather 
by opinion than power, as a partial check on the 
other branches. What lights these precedents gave 
them, our fathers had ; beyond this, they owed every 
thing to their own wisdom and courage, in daring 
to carry out and apply to the executive branch of 
the government that system of delegated power, of 
which the elements existed in their own provincial 
assemblies. They assumed, at once, not as a mat- 

* Hume's Essavs, vol. I. 



28 

ter to be reached by argumentation, but as the dic- 
tate of unaided reason — as an axiom too obvious to 
be discussed, though never in practice applied — that 
where the state is too large to be governed by an 
actual assembly of all the citizens, the people shall 
elect those, who will act for them, in making the 
laws and administering the government. They, 
therefore, laid the basis of their constitutions in a 
proportionate delegation of power, from every part 
of the community ; and regarding the declaration of 
our Independence as the true era of our institutions, 
we are authorized to assert, that from that era 
dates the establishment of the only perfect organi- 
zation of government, that of a Representative Re- 
public, administered by persons freely chosen by the 
people. 

This plan of government is therefore, in its theo- 
ry, perfect ; and in its operation it is perfect also ; — 
that is to say, no measure of policy, public or pri- 
vate, domestic or foreign, can long be pursued, 
against the will of a majority of the people. Far- 
ther than this the wisdom of government cannot go. 
The majority of the people may err. Man collect- 
ively as well as individually, is man still ; but whom 
can you more safely trust than the majority of the 
people ; who is so likely to be right, always right, 
and altogether right, as the collective majority of a 
great nation, represented in all its interests and pur- 
suits, and in all its communities ? 



29 

Thus has been solved the great problem in human 
affairs ; and a frame of government, perfect in its 
principles, has been brought down from the airy re- 
gions of Utopia, and has found ' a local habitation 
and a name ' in our country. Henceforward we have 
only to strive that the practical operation of our sys- 
tems may be true to their spirit and theory. Hence- 
forth it may be said of us, what never could have 
been said of any people, since the world began, — 
be our sufferings what they will, no one can attribute 
them to our frame of government ; no one can point 
out a principle in our political systems, of w hich he 
has had reason to complain ; no one can sigh for a 
change in his country's institutions, as a boon to be 
desired for himself or for his children. There is 
not an apparent defect in our constitutions which 
could be removed without introducing a greater 
one ; nor a real evil, whose removal would not be 
rather a nearer approach to the principles on which 
they are founded, than a departure from them. 

And what, fellow citizens, are to be the fruits to 
us and to the world, of the establishment of this 
perfect system of government? I might partly 
answer the inquiry, by reminding you what have 
been the fruits to us and to the world ; by inviting 
you to compare our beloved country, as it is, in 
extent of settlement, in numbers and resources, in 
the useful and ornamental arts, in the abundance of 



30 

the common blessings of life, in the general standard 
of character, in the means of education, in the insti- 
tutions for social objects, in the various great indus- 
trious interests, in public strength and national 
respectability, with what it Avas in all these respects 
fifty years ago. But the limits of this occasion will 
not allow us to engage in such an enumeration ; 
and it will be amply sufficient for us to contemplate, 
in its principle^ the beneficial operation on society, 
of the form of government bequeathed to us by our 
fathers. This principle is Equality ; the equal en- 
joyment by every citizen of the rights and privileges 
of the social union. 

The principle of all other governments is monopo- 
ly, exclusion, favor. They secure great privileges 
to a small number, and necessarily at the expense of 
all the rest of the citizens. 

In the keen conflict of minds, which preceded and 
accompanied the political convulsions of the last 
generation, the first principles of society were can- 
vassed with a boldness and power before unknown 
in Europe, and, from the great principle that all 
men are equal, it was for the first time triumphantly 
inferred, as a necessary consequence, that the will 
of a majority of the people is the rule of govern- 
ment. To meet these doctrines, so appalling in 
their tendency to the existing institutions of Europe, 
new ground was also taken by the champions of 



31 

those institutions, and particularly by a man, whose 
genius, eloquence, and integrity gave a currency, 
which nothing else could have given, to his splendid 
paradoxes and servile doctrines. In one of his re- 
nowned productions,* this great man, for great, even 
in his errors, most assuredly he was, in order to 
meet the inferences drawn from the equality of man, 
that the will of the majority must be the rule of 
government, has undertaken, as he says, " to fix, with 
some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is 
we mean when we say the People ; " and in ful- 
filment of this design, he lays it down, " that in a 
state of rude nature, there is no such thing as a 
people. A number of men, in themselves, can have 
no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the 
idea of a corporation, it is wholly artificial ; and 
made, like all other legal fictions, by common agree- 
ment." 

" In a state of rude nature, there is no such thing 
as a people ! " I would fain learn in what corner of 
the earth, rude or civilized, men are to be found, 
who are not a people, more or less improved. " A 
number of men in themselves have no collective 
capacity ! " I would gladly be told where, in what 
region, I will not say of geography, I know there is 
none such, but of poetry or romance, a number of 
men has been placed, by nature, each standing alone, 

* The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 



32 

and not bound liy any of those ties of blood, affinity^ 
and language, which form the rudiments of a collect- 
ive capacity. " The idea of a people is the idea of 
a corporation, it is wholly artificial, and made like 
all other legal fictions, by common agreement." 
Indeed, is the social principle artificial ? is the gift 
of articulate speech, which enables man to impart 
his condition to man, the organized sense, which 
enables him to comprehend what is imparted ? is 
that sympathy, which subjects our opinions and feel- 
ings, and through them our conduct, to the influence 
of others and their conduct to our influence ? is that 
chain of cause and effect, which makes our charac- 
ters receive impressions from the generations before 
us, and puts it in our power, by a good or bad pre- 
cedent, to distil a poison or a balm into the characters 
of posterity ? are these, indeed, all by-laws of a 
corporation ? Are all the feelings of ancestry, pos- 
terity, and fellow-citizenship ; all the charm, venera- 
tion, and love, bound up in the name of country; 
the delight, the enthusiasm, with which we seek out, 
after the lapse of generations and ages, the traces of 
our fathers' bravery or wisdom, are these all " a 
legal fiction?" Is it, indeed, a legal fiction, that 
moistens the eye of the solitary traveller, when he 
meets a countryman in a foreign land ? Is it a 
" common agreement," that gives its meaning to my 
mother tongue, and enables me to speak to the hearts 



93 

of my kindred men, beyond the rivers and beyond 
the mountains ? Yes, it is a common agreement ; 
recorded on the same registry with that, which 
marshals the winged nations, that, 

In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way, 
Intelligent of seasons ; and set forth 
Their aery caravan, high over seas 
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing 
Easing their flight. 

The mutual dependence of man on man, family 
on family, interest on interest, is but a chapter in 
the great law, not of corporations, but of nature. 
The law, by which commerce, manufactures, and 
agriculture support each other, is the same law, in 
virtue of which the thirsty earth owes its fertility to 
the rivers and the rains ; and the clouds derive their 
high-travelling waters from the rising vapours ; and 
the ocean is fed from the secret springs of the 
mountains ; and the plant that grows derives its in- 
crease from the plant that decays ; and all subsist and 
thrive, not by themselves but by others, in the great 
political economy of nature. The necessary cohe- 
sion of the parts of the political system is no more 
artificial, than the gravity of the natural system, in 
which planet is bound to planet, and all to the sun, 
and the sun to all. Insulate an interest in society, 
a family, or a man, and all the faculties and powers 
they possess will avail them little toward the great 
5 



34 

objects of life ; in like manner, as not all the myste- 
riously combined elements of the earth around and 
beneath us, the light and volatile airs, that fill the 
atmosphere ; not the electric fluid, which lies con- 
densed and embattled in its cloudy magazines, or 
subtilely diffused through creation ; not the volcanic 
fires that rage in the earth's bosom, nor all her mines 
of coal, and nitre, and sulphur ; nor fountains of 
naphtha, petroleum, or asphaltus ; — not all, combined 
and united, afford one beam of that common light, 
w^hich sends man forth to his labors, and which is 
the sun's contribution to the system, in which we 
live. And yet the great natural system, the political, 
intellectual, moral system, is artificial, is a legal 
fiction ! " O that mine enemy had said it," the 
admirers of Mr Burke may well exclaim. O that 
some impious Voltaire, some ruthless Rousseau had 
uttered it. Had uttered it ! Rousseau did utter the 
same thing ; and more rebuked than any other error 
of this misguided genius, is his doctrine of the Social 
Contmct, of which Burke has reasserted, and more 
than reasserted the principle, in the sentences I have 
quoted. 

But no, fellow citizens ; political society exists 
by the law of nature. Man is formed for it ; every 
man is formed for it ; every man has an equal right 
to its privileges, and to be deprived of them, under 
whatever pretence, is so far to be reduced to slavery* 



35 

The authors of the Declaration of Independence saw 
this, and taught that all men are born free and equal. 
On this principle, our constitutions rest; and no 
constitution can bind a people on any other princi- 
ple. No original contract, that gives away this 
right, can bind any but the parties to it. My fore- 
fatliers could not, if they had wished, have stipulated 
to their king, that his children should rule over their 
children. By the introduction of this principle of 
equality it is, that the Declaration of Independence 
has at once effected a before unimagined extension 
of social privileges. Grant that no new blessing 
(which, however, can by no means with truth be 
granted) be introduced into the world on this plan 
of equality, still it will have discharged the inesti- 
mable office of communicating, in equal proportion, 
to all the citizens, those privileges of the social 
union, which were before partitioned in an invidious 
gradation, profusely among the privileged orders, and 
parsimoniously among all the rest. Let jne instance 
in the right of suffrage. The enjoyment of this 
right enters largely into the happiness of the social 
condition. I do not mean, that it is necessary to 
our happiness actually to exercise this right at every 
election ; but I say, the right itself to give our voice 
in the choice of public servants, and the management 
of public affairs, is so precious, so inestimable, that 
there is not a citizen who hears me, that would not 



36 

lay down his life to assert it. This is a right un- 
known in every country but ours ; I say unknown, 
because in England, whose institutions make the 
nearest approach to a popular character, the elective 
suffrage is not only incredibly unequal and capricious 
in its distribution ; but extends, after all, only to 
the choice of a minority of one house of the legisla- 
ture. Thus then the people of this country are, by 
their constitutions of government, endowed with a 
new source of enjoyment, elsewhere almost un- 
known ; a great and substantial happiness ; an un- 
alloyed happiness. Most of the desirable things of 
life bear a high price in the world's market. Every 
thing usually deemed a great good, must, for its 
attainment, be weighed down, in the opposite scale, 
with what is as usually deemed a great evil — labor, 
care, danger. It is only the unbought, spontaneous, 
essential circumstances of our nature and condition, 
that yield a liberal enjoyment. Our religious hopes, 
intellectual meditations, social sentiments, family 
affections, political privileges, these are springs 
of unpurchased happiness ; and to condemn men to 
live under an arbitrary government, is to cut them 
off from nearly all the satisfactions, which nature 
designed should flow from those principles within 
us, hy which a tribe of kindred men is constituted 
a people. 



37 

But it is not merely an extension to all the mem- 
bers of society, of those blessings, which, under 
other systems, are monopolized by a few ; — great 
and positive improvements, I feel sure, are destined 
to flow from the introduction of the republican sys- 
tem. The first of these will be, to make wars less 
frequent, and finally to cause them to cease alto- 
gether. It was not a republican, it was the subject 
of a monarchy, and no patron of novelties, who said. 

War is a game, which, were their subjects wise, 
Kings would not play at. 

A great majority of the wars, which have deso- 
lated mankind, have grown either out of the disput- 
ed titles and rival claims of sovereigns, or their 
personal character, particularly their ambition, or 
the character of their favorites, or some other cir- 
cumstance evidently incident to a form of govern- 
ment which withholds from the people the ultimate 
control of affairs. And the more civilized men 
grow, strange as it may seem, the more univei'sally 
is this the case. In the barbarous ages the people 
pursued war as an occupation ; its plunder was more 
profitable, than their labor at home, in the state of 
general insecurity. In modern times, princes raise 
their soldiers by conscription, their sailors by im- 
pressment, and drive them at the point of the bayo- 
net and dirk, into the battles they fight for reasons 
of state. But in a republic, where the people, by 



38 

their representatives, must vote the declaration of 
war, and afterwards raise the means of its support, 
none but wars of just and necessary defence can be 
waged. Republics, we are told, indeed, are ambi- 
tious, — a seemingly wise remark, devoid of meaning. 
Man is ambitious ; and the question is, where will 
his ambition be most likely to drive his country into 
war ; in a monarchy where he has but to ' cry havoc, 
and let slip the dogs of war,' or in a republic, where 
he must get the vote of a strong majority of the na- 
tion ? Let history furnish the answer. The book, 
which promised you, in its title, a picture of the pro- 
gress of the human family, turns out to be a record, 
not of the human family, but of the Macedonian fami- 
ly, the Julian family, the families of York and Lan- 
caster, of Lorraine and Bourbon. We need not go 
to the ancient annals to confirm this remark. We 
need not speak of those, who reduced Asia and 
Africa, in the morning of the world, to a vassalage 
from which they have never recovered. We need 
not dwell on the more notorious exploits of the Al- 
exanders and the Csesars, the men who Avept for 
other worlds to visit with the pestilence of their 
arms. We need not run down the bloody line of 
the dark ages, when the barbarous North disgorged 
her ambitious savages on Europe, or when at a later 
period, barbarous Europe poured back her holy 
ruffians on Asia ; we need but look at the dates of 



39 

modern history, — the history of civilized, balanced 
Europe. We here behold the ambition of Charles V, 
involving the continent of Europe in war, for the 
first half of the sixteenth century, and the fiendlike 
malignity of Catherine de' Medici and her kindred 
distracting it the other half. We see the haughty 
and cheerless bigotry of Philip, persevering in a 
conflict of extermination for one whole age in the 
Netherlands, and darkening the English channel 
with his armada ; while France prolongs her civil 
dissensions, because Henry IV was the twenty- 
second cousin of Henry HI. We enter the seven- 
teenth century, and again find the hereditary pride 
and bigotry of the House of Austria wasting Ger- 
many and the neighbouring powers with the Thirty 
Years' war ; and before the peace of W estphalia is 
concluded, England is plunged into the fiery trial 
of her militant liberties. Contemporaneously, the 
civil wars are revived in France, and the kingdom 
is blighted by the passions of Mazarin. The civil 
wars are healed, and the atrocious career of Louis 
XIV begins ; a half century of bloodshed and woe, 
that stands in revolting contrast with the paltry 
pretences of his wars. At length the peace of 
Ryswic is made in 1697, and bleeding Europe 
throws off the harness and lies down like an ex- 
hausted giant to repose. In three years, the testa- 
ment of a doating Spanish king gives the signal 



40 

for the Succession war ; till a cup of tea spilt oir 
Mrs Masham's apron, restores peace to the af- 
flicted kingdoms. Meantime the madman of the 
North had broken loose upon the world, and was 
running his frantic round. Peace at length is re- 
stored, and with one or two short wars, it remains 
unbroken, till, in 1740, the will of Charles VI oc- 
casions another testamentary contest; and in the 
gallant words of the stern but relenting moralist, 

The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms. 

Eight years are this time sufficient to exhaust the 
combatants, and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle is 
concluded; but, in 1755, the old French war is 
kindled in our own wilderness, and through the 
united operation of the monopolizing spirit of En- 
gland, the party intrigues of France, and the ambi- 
tion of Frederic, spread throughout Europe. The 
wars of the last generation I need not name, nor 
dwell on that signal retribution, by which the polit- 
ical ambition of the cabinets at length conjured up 
the military ambition of the astonishing individual, 
who seems, in our day, to have risen out of the ranks 
of the people, to chastise the privileged orders with 
that iron scourge, w^ith which they had so long afflict- 
ed mankind ; to gather with his strong Plebeian hands 
the fragrance of those palmy honors, which they 
had reared for three centuries in the bloody gardens 
of their royalty. It may w^ell be doubted, whether, 



41 

under a government like ours, one of all these con- 
tests would have taken place. Those that arose from 
disputed titles, and bequests of thrones, could not of 
course have existed ; and making every allov^ance 
for the effect of popular delusion, it seems to me 
not possible, that a representative government would 
have embarked in any of the wars of ambition and 
aggrandizement, which fill up the catalogue. 

Who then are these families and individuals — 
these royal lanistce — by whom the nations are kept 
in training for a long gladiatorial combat ? Are 
they better, wiser than we ? Look at them in life ; 
what are they ? " Kings are fond," says Mr Burke, 
no scoffer at thrones, " kings are fond of low com- 
pany."* What are they when gone ? Expende Han- 
nihalem. Enter the great cathedrals of Europe, and 
contemplate the sepulchres of the men, who claim- 
ed to be the lords of each successive generation. 
Question your own feelings, as you behold where 
the Plantagenets and Tudors, the Stuarts and 
those of Brunswic, lie mournfully huddled up in 
the chapels of Westminster Abbey ; and compare 
those feelings with the homage you pay to Heaven's 
aristocracy, — the untitled learning, genius, and wit 
that moulder by their side. Count over the sixty- 
six emperors and princes of the Austrian house, that 
lie gathered in the dreary pomp of monumental mar- 

* Speech on Economical Reform. 

6 



42 

ble, in the vaults of the Capuchins at Vienna ; and 
weigh the worth of their dust against the calamities 
of their Peasants' war, their Thirty Years' war, 
their Succession war, their wars to enforce the Prag- 
matic Sanction, and of all the other uncouth preten- 
ces for destroying mankind, with which they have 
plagued the world. 

But the cessation of wars, to which we look for- 
ward as the result of the gradual diffusion of repub- 
lican government, is but the commencement of the 
social improvements, which cannot but flow from 
the same benignant source. It has been justly said 
that he was a great benefactor of mankind, who 
could make two blades of grass grow, where one 
grew before. But our fathers, our fathers were the 
benefactors of mankind, who brought into action 
such a vast increase of physical, political, and moral 
energy ; who have made not two citizens to live 
only, but hundreds, yea, unnumbered thousands to 
live, and to prosper in regions, which but for their 
achievements would have remained for ages unset- 
tled, and to enjoy those rights of men, which but 
for their institutions would have continued to be 
arrogated, as the exclusive inheritance of a few. I 
appeal to the fact. I ask any sober judge of po- 
litical proba})ility to tell me, whether more has not 
been done to extend the domain of civilization, in 
fifty years, since the declaration of independence, 



43 

than would have been done in five centuries of 
continued colonial subjection. It is not even a 
matter of probability ; the king in council had 
adopted it, as a maxim of his American policy, that 
no settlements in this country should be made be- 
yond the Alleganies ; — that the design of Providence 
in spreading out the fertile valley of the Mississippi, 
should not be fulfilled. 

I knov\^ that it is said, in palliation of the restric- 
tive influence of European governments, that they 
are as good as their subjects can bear. I know it is 
said, that it would be useless and pernicious to call 
on the half savage and brutified peasantry of many 
countries, to take a share in the administration 
of affairs, by electing or being elected to office. 
I know they are unfit for it ; it is the very curse of 
the system. What is it that unfits them ? What is 
it that makes slavish labor, and slavish ignorance, 
and slavish stupidity, their necessary heritage ? 
Are they not made of the same Caucasian clay ? 
Have they not five senses, the same faculties, the 
same passions ? And is it any thing but an aggrava- 
tion of the vice of arbitrary governments, that they 
first deprive men of their rights, and then unfit 
them to exercise those rights ; profanely constru- 
ing the effect into a justification of the evil ? 

The influence of our institutions on foreign na- 
tions is — next to their effect on our own condition — 



44 

the most interesting question we can contemplate. 
With our example of popular government before 
their eyes, the nations of the earth will not eventu- 
ally be satisfied with any other. With the French 
revolution as a beacon to guide them, they will 
learn, we may hope, not to embark too rashly on 
the mounting waves of reform. The cause, how- 
ever, of popular government is rapidly gaining in 
the world. In England, education is carrying it 
wide and deep into society. On the continent, writ- 
ten constitutions of governments, nominally repre- 
sentative, — though as yet, it must be owned, nom- 
inally so alone, — are adopted in eight or ten, late 
absolute monarchies ; and it is not without good 
grounds that we may trust, that the indifference 
with which the Christian powers contemplate the 
sacrifice of Greece, and their crusade against the 
constitutions of Spain, Piedmont, and Naples, will 
satisfy the mass of thinking men in Europe, that it 
is time to put an end to these cruel delusions, and 
take their own government into their own hands. 

But the great triumphs of constitutional freedom, 
to which our independence has furnished the exam- 
ple, have been witnessed in the southern portion of 
our hemisphere. Sunk to the last point of colonial 
degradation, they have risen at once into the organ- 
ization of free republics. Their struggle has been 
arduous ; and eighteen years of chequered fortune 



45 

have not yet brought it to a close. But we must 
not infer, from their prolonged agitation, that their 
independence is uncertain ; that they have prema- 
turely put on the toga mrilis of Freedom. They 
have not begun too soon ; they have more to do. 
Our war of independence was shorter ; — happily 
we were contending with a government, that could 
not, like that of Spain, pursue an interminable and 
hopeless contest, in defiance of the people's will. 
Our transition to a mature and well adjusted consti- 
tution was more prompt than that of our sister re- 
publics ; for the foundations had long been settled, 
the preparation long made. And when we consider 
that it is our example, which has aroused the spirit 
of Independence from California to Cape Horn; 
that the experiment of liberty, if it had failed with 
us, most surely would not have been attempted by 
them ; that even now our counsels and acts will 
operate as powerful precedents in this great family 
of republics, we learn the importance of the post 
which Providence has assigned us in the world. A 
wise and harmonious administration of the public 
affairs, — a faithful, liberal, and patriotic exercise of 
the private duties of the citizen, — while they secure 
our happiness at home, will diffuse a healthful influ- 
ence through the channels of national communica- 
tion, and serve the cause of liberty beyond the 
Equator and the Andes. When we show an united. 



46 

conciliatory, and imposing front to their rising states, 
we show them, better than sounding eulogies can 
do, the true aspect of an independent republic. 
We give them a living example, that the fireside 
policy of a people is like that of the individual man. 
As the one, commencing in the prudence, order, and 
industry of the private circle, extends itself to all 
the duties of social life, of the family, the neigh- 
bourhood, the country ; so the true domestic policy 
of the republic, beginning in the wise organization 
of its own institutions, pervades it territories with a 
vigilant, prudent, temperate administration ; and ex- 
tends the hand of cordial interest to all the friendly 
nations, especially to those which are of the house- 
hold of liberty. 

It is in this way, that we are to fulfil our destiny 
in the world. The greatest engine of moral power, 
which human nature knows, is an organized, pros- 
perous state. All that man, in his individual capa- 
city, can do — all that he can effect by his fraterni- 
ties — by his ingenious discoveries and wonders of 
art — or by his influence over others — is as nothing, 
compared with the collective, perpetuated influence 
on human affairs and human hap])iness of a well 
constituted, powerful commonwealth. It blesses 
generations with its sweet influence ; — even the 
barren earth seems to pour out its fruits under a 
system where property is secure, while her fairest 



47 

gardens are blighted by despotism ; — men, thinking, 
reasoning men, abound beneath its benignant sway ; 
— nature enters into a beautiful accord, a better, 
purer asiento with man, and guides an industrious 
citizen to every rood of her smiling wastes ; — and we 
see, at length, that what has been called a state of 
nature, has been most falsely, calumniously so de- 
nominated ; that the nature of man is neither that 
of a savage, a hermit, nor a slave ; but that of a 
member of a well ordered family, that of a good 
neighbour, a free citizen, a well informed, good 
man, acting with others like him. This is the les- 
son which is taught in the charter of our indepen- 
dence ; this is the lesson, which our example is to 
teach the world. 

The epic poet of Rome — the faithful subject of an 
absolute prince — in unfolding the duties and desti- 
nies of his countrymen, bids them look down with 
disdain on the polished and intellectual arts of 
Greece, and deem their arts to be 

To rule tlie nations with imperial sway ; 

To spare the tribes that yield ; fight down the proud ; 

And force the mood of peace upon the world. 

A nobler counsel breathes from the charter of our in- 
dependence ; a happier province belongs to our free 
republic. Peace we would extend, but by persua- 
sion and example, — the moral force, by which alone 
it can prevail among the nations. Wars we may 



48 

encounter, but it is in the sacred character of the in- 
jured and the wronged ; to raise the trampled rights 
of humanity from the dust ; to rescue the mild form 
of Liberty, from her abode among the prisons and 
the scaffolds of the elder world-, and to seat her in 
the chair of state among her adoring children : — to 
give her beauty for ashes ; a healthful action for her 
cruel agony ; to put at last a period to her warfare 
on earth ; to tear her star-spangled banner from the 
perilous ridges of battle, and plant it on the rock of 
ages. There be it fixed for ever, — the power of a 
free people slumbering in its folds, their peace 
reposing in its shade ! 



Note to page 11. 

About the time these words were uttered, the great man 
to whom they refer, breathed his last, ten minutes before one 
o'clock on the 4th of July, 1826 ; and toward the close of 
the afternoon of the same day, the other venerated patriot, 
alluded to, also expired. 

To have been one of those, whose names stand subscribed 
to the Declaration of Independence, is of itself a rare felicity ; 
to have lived to witness, at the close of the half century from 
the declaration, the prosperous condition of Independent 
America, is an eminent favor of Providence, beyond the 
reach of expectation, and almost beyond the course of Nature. 
But history can scarce furnish a coincidence so nearly miracu- 
lous, as that the individuals, who stood first and second on the 
Committee of five appointed to prepare the Declaration, who 
were the two persons exclusively designated by their col- 
leagues for this most honorable trust, and who, after filling as 
associates, or competitors, the highest offices in the country, 
had long cultivated an honorable intercourse in retirement, 
should have passed out of the world together, on the Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the day, which their Declaration had render- 
ed immortal for themselves, for their country, and for every 
free people. That these venerated Fathers of their Country 
retained to the last that possession of reason, which enabled 
them to feel the signal favor of Providence, that was vouch- 



50 

safed to them, is a wonderful circumstance at their advanced 
age, which fills up this picture of human felicity. When Mr- 
Adams, then near his end, was informed by his attendants that 
the firing of cannons and ringing of bells denoted the Fourth 
of July, instead of calling it a " glorious day," as he was 
wont to do, he was heard by those around him, for the first 
time, and ahuost with his last breath, to call it " a great and 
a good day ! " It is impossible to contemplate a scene like this, 
and compare it with his letter written fi-om Philadelphia on the 
5th of July, 177G, without emotions of a higher cast, than 
those of astonishment and admiration. " Yesterday," he then 
wrote in the spirit of prophecy, " the greatest question was de- 
cided which was ever decided among men. A resolution 
was passed unanimously ' That these United States are and 
of right ought to be Free and Independent States.' 

" The day has passed. The fourth of July, 1776, will be 
a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to 
believe, it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the 
Great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated as 
the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Al- 
mighty God. It ought to be solemnized with pomps, shows, 
games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one 
end of the continent to the other, from this time for ever ! You 
will think me transported with entliusiasm, but 1 am not. I am 
well aware of the toil, blood, and treasure it will cost to main- 
tain this Declaration, and support and defend these States ; 
yet, through all tlie gloom, I can see a ray of light and glory. 
I can see that the end is worth more than all the means ; and 
that posterity will triumph, akhough you and I may rue — 
which I hope we shall not." 



51 



It is stated, in the accounts of the last days of Mr Jefferson, 
-that liis favorite exclamation, as he drew near his departure 
was, Nunc dimittis, Domine, " Lord, now lettest thou thy ser- 
vant depart in peace." On the day before his death, being sen- 
sibly near his end, on inquiring what day of the montli it was, 
and being answered " The third of July," he expressed a de- 
sire to live till the next day, " that he might breathe the air of 
the Fiftieth Anniversary ! " 

There have certainly been times, in the history of our coun- 
try, when the political opposition between these two venerable 
men, was deemed a source of great evil, in its immediate in- 
fluence on the community. Tn reference to their own charac- 
ters, to their personal history, and the moral influence of their 
example, their political contention can now no longer be re- 
gretted. Notliing less than so keen a struggle between men, 
who had been united heart and hand, in such a cause ; and 
nothing less than a long and honorable friendship subsequent- 
ly existing between men who had thus contended, would have 
sufficed to read a salutary lesson of mutual forbearance and re- 
spect to the contending political interests of the day, and of 
mild expostulation to those, who, imitating these illustrious men 
in nothing but their dissensions, mistakenly think to show re- 
spect to their memory, by endeavouring to revive and perpetu- 
ate them. 



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